Shadowrun IS coming... Options

[nezumi]

easytohate, I do agree with what you said (not totally sure where you were going with it, but I agree with what you said). We as people do rely on the welfare of our businesses and the government realizes that. If the government let the airline industry go belly up, there's a lot of individuals who would be screwed. I don't think the government would allow a corporation to royally screw over tons of people (for example, mastercard messing up somehow, intentionally or not). The government has a vested interest in somehow getting around that sort of problem.

SR as a product of the cyberpunk genre, which arose in the early 80's with the first global corporations. The idea at the time was that it would be corporations who would eventually hold all the reins, and that scared people. However, twenty years later, I don't honestly think most people are worried about corporations, they're worried about the government more (back to Orwell, yay!) I think it would be a lot of fun to rewrite the SR universe to reflect that. What if, after a second terrorist attack in 2005 on the white house, the government decides that its allowed to shoot unauthorized people on sight at government facilities to help keep 'national security'? What if this trickles down to the state level? What if the government, in a failing attempt to keep a waning economy from failing, gets sick of funding private industries and begins buying them? (I'm not sure of the details, but I know that Amtrak is effectively more government owned than private. Rail runs at a loss.) The Shiawise decision is set up such that any "CRITICAL" government facility can be guarded with deadly force, and now that happens to include things like powerplants, medical buildings etc. Maybe that would get players to stop and say 'oooh.. that IS kind of scary now.'

Just a thought : )

[Fix-it]

Um... critical buildings ARE gaurded as it is... well, at least the guys with empty M16s at the airport PRETEND to every day.

[nezumi]

No, they aren't. My building is 'critical', in that if it were to disappear off the map, DHS would lose a significant portion of its abilities to do proper searches, there could be a sudden stop in a significant portion of our food deliveries, we would have little protection against certain diseases etc. These are things which have been labelled as 'critical' to the functioning of the United States' government. We have five rent-a-cops with heavy flashlights, handcuffs and batons.

There's a disease center in North Carolina and, while it studies animal diseases, it has diseases such as anthrax. From what I understand, only recently have they been looking into putting guards or locking doors. No, I am not joking.

What IS guarded with people with M-16's? Military buildings and Head of State buildings (and I do mean buildings of MAJOR importance. The guard at the front of the naval academy only has a pistol.) They are NOT given permission to shoot on sight when dealing with unauthorized personnel.